Employers hit back with lockouts

Two employers have locked out hundreds of workers in response to separate bouts of industrial action, as some businesses take a tougher line in bargaining for new wage deals.

The biggest dispute involves Jeld-Wen, which manufactures windows, doors and building products. It will lock out several hundred employees for 72 hours in four states from today.

The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union says the company has offered annual rises of 2.5 per cent to 2.9 per cent over three years, which amount to a cut in real wages. “This manufacturer has plenty of work on, is profitable, but simply does not want to share," CFMEU negotiator Phil Davies said.

The lockout comes after CFMEU members went on strike over deadlocked pay negotiations.

Jeld-Wen Australia executive Nigel Woolley said the company was “strongly committed to continue negotiating in good faith and is keen to conclude a new agreement quickly in the best long-term interests of both the business and all its employees".

Meanwhile, the Health and Community Services Union says guards at the Thomas Embling psychiatric prison hospital in Melbourne have been stood down by security group G4S after imposing work bans. The Fair Work Act allows an employer to reduce workers’ pay ­during the period in which they strike or impose work bans. But the union’s Victorian secretary, Lloyd Williams, said the workers had been stood down rather than hit with a pay cut.

“We’re saying it’s a lockout because they are saying it’s indefinite," he said. “The fact of the matter is that people aren’t working and that they’ve got scabs working in there."

G4S did not answer questions about whether the guards had been locked out. It said the dispute would be in Fair Work Australia today and the security staff were “appropriately qualified to ensure the safety and security of all at the hospital".

Related Quotes

Company Profile

In NSW, a spokesman for Finance Services Minister
Greg Pearce
said the O’Farrell government was not contemplating lockouts. NSW faces a wave of strikes by public sector workers protesting about financial cuts, including 40 Sydney fire stations.